


Double Back, Redouble

by Anna_Hopkins



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bottom Tom Riddle, Crack Treated Seriously, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Head Auror Harry Potter, Infidelity, Light Angst, M/M, Magically Powerful Harry Potter, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Possessive Behavior, Tags Are Hard, Time Travel Fix-It, Top Harry Potter, Trope Subversion, of a sort, something of a postwar Harry character study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:48:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23261965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna_Hopkins/pseuds/Anna_Hopkins
Summary: Tom's friends notice their new Defense professor looks like him.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Comments: 88
Kudos: 606





	1. The Lookalike.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lejf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lejf/gifts).



> (2021-02-05) I originally altered the timeline but then realized I didn't have to - so I edited it back from 1944 to 1945.

April, 1945.

"...Don't you think so, Tom?"

Tom blinked, looking up from his book at the source of the half-heard question. Abraxas was grinning at him; when he had Tom's attention, he gave a subtle nod toward their Defense professor, who was currently demonstrating... something or other. Tom had gotten distracted by marginalia in the book he'd 'borrowed' from the Restricted Section.

"I believe I missed the first part of your question, my friend," Tom murmured. "Kindly repeat it?"

Abraxas stifled a laugh in his hand. "I said, the new professor really looks a lot like you when he has his glasses off. Don't you think?"

"Hm." Tom considered the matter. Professor Potter -- 'not _a_ Potter, though, to be clear' -- had removed his thick-framed, round glasses at some point in the past few minutes and neglected to put them back on. There were a few superficial similarities between them, perhaps, if one discounted the laugh lines in Potter's face and the startling green of his eyes. But then, most magicals in Britain looked alike. Was it really so significant? "I suppose so," Tom acquiesced, returning to his reading on Inferi.

He had assumed that to be the last he heard on the matter, but not so.

"Professor, Professor," called Walburga Black sweetly as she waylaid Harry in the hallway. "Might I trouble you a moment? There is a small matter-"

Harry allowed the seventh-year witch to join him in his office, feeling somewhat like he had in his first year with the troll and the bathroom -- except now he was in Hermione's position. Why exactly Dippet had decided to 'let' Harry substitute in as Slytherin Head-of-House for the rest of term, he had no idea, but he hadn't dared refuse when the Headmaster was already letting him stay on as a teacher for the latter term that year.

Even if he'd had a choice, Harry suspected he'd have accepted, though he couldn't identify his own motivations either.

Time travel, it seemed, was a hell of a drug.

Miss Black had already seated herself in one of the visitors' chairs at Harry's desk, which obliged him to sit in his own chair, something Harry was loath to do (it reminded him how much work he had at hand). The barest effort on his part to find out what was the matter yielded answers: it was unusually straightforward of her, actually, which only meant ulterior motives were in play.

"My friends and I are wondering," the witch batted her eyelashes, and Harry supposed that might have worked in her favor had he not already 'met' her in the future, "if you would object to donning a minor glamor at dinner this evening? We are trying to prove a comparison, but so far only a few have acknowledged its validity."

Well. That almost sounded interesting enough to try, if a bit weird. (Purebloods, sometimes. Ugh.) Harry leaned back in his chair, the model of patience, and asked, "What is the nature of this glamor, Miss Black, and may I ask what comparison you wish to prove?"

Walburga uncrossed and re-crossed her legs, a gesture Harry had come to identify as her 'tell', and leaned in, confiding. "Medina-" that is, Medina Mulciber- "thinks you and Tom look a lot alike. We've been trying to point it out to him, but he hasn't taken any notice."

 _Of course he hasn't,_ Harry thought. _He's busy reading Dark Arts books._ Perhaps he was supposed to do something about that, but frankly, what was the point of intervening when he'd already defeated Voldemort in his time? There was no academic reason to call him out; 'Mister Riddle' was at the top of his class. Interference accomplished little save to annoy the young wizard and draw more attention to himself, attention he didn't need if he was going to successfully orchestrate his return to his own time not long from now.

"If you could glamor your eyes red to match his, we think we can convince him," Walburga was saying.

(Harry wondered why no one else thought Tom's red eyes were weird.)

"I suppose I may as well, if it means so much to you," Harry sighed with a small smile, reaching for his wand.

In the grand scheme of things, what harm could it do?

Abraxas nudged Tom in the ribs with an elbow, gesturing toward the Head Table. Distracted from his perusal of the book in his lap -- later on in the same chapter as earlier -- Tom obliged his friend.

And froze.

His future self was sitting at the table, picking at the mashed potatoes on his plate. "That's impossible," Tom said, controlling his expression. It would not do for anyone to see the depth of his shock.

(How had he not noticed - but then, he _was_ a master of disguise. Or he would be, by then-)

Abraxas snorted. "So do you believe Walburga now?"

"You mean, that is-"

"The professor. He glamored his eyes red."

Pieces were clicking rapidly into place, though he did not blame Abraxas for not having the same epiphany. Professor Potter, who had abruptly joined the staff on New Year's Day to replace Merrythought for the rest of the year; who had not spared Tom a passing glance, unsurprised even by the exotic color of his eyes; who had apparently brought no personal items with him upon his arrival, given how bare Tom's friends had reported his office to be.

Tom took in this information, and plotted.

In the background, his friends shared smiles at having 'convinced' him, with no idea what they had truly brought to light.

"Professor Potter, may I speak with you privately?"

Tom Riddle stood in the doorway of Harry's office, expression more wide-eyed than Harry could ever recall seeing. Baffled, he nodded, stepping aside to let him into the room.

Hospitality urged Harry to offer him tea, but he was privately glad Riddle declined. The urgency in the boy's body language was a bit concerning, actually; by force of habit, Harry gathered his magical energy a bit closer to him, ready for a confrontation. He disguised it by making a cup for himself with the tea set he'd borrowed from the kitchens.

He could feel Riddle's eyes on him the entire time he went through the motions, lingering until Harry turned back to his guest and sat down across from him with his cup. "I don't think I've ever had you in my office," Harry observed with genuine, mild surprise. "What brings you to my office, Mr. Riddle?"

"You're a time traveller," Riddle stated without preamble, wonder in his voice.

Harry blinked at him. How had he figured _that_ out? "I am, yes."

The resulting expression was one Harry would best describe as 'starry-eyed'. "How did I- you- do it? Did we become immortal as planned? And if so, why bother returning?"

"..Wait," Harry began slowly, "I think you've misunderstood-"

"-the Unspeakables' fault? Have we produced any heirs, or is that counterproductive to keeping control of the empire?"

"Wait, Riddle - Tom." Harry held up a hand for silence, halting the rest of the barrage of questions. "It sounds like you think I'm the future version of you, is that right?"

"Yes, it must be," Tom insisted, "though you're using a different wand than mine-"

"A brother wand, actually," Harry had to point out, "but I'm not. Us looking alike is coincidental. I _am_ a time traveller from your future, but I'm not you yourself."

Tom nodded, a calculating shine in his eyes as though he were in on a secret. "Ah, I see. So Tom Riddle is gone, and Lord Voldemort rises-"

Harry dragged his hand down his face, exasperated. "No, Tom! I'm not you - you're _dead!"_

That might have been the wrong thing to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry I've got more of this


	2. The Plan.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom has a minor existential crisis, and Harry takes pity.

_ Harry dragged his hand down his face, exasperated. “No, Tom! I’m not you - you’re  _ **_dead_ ** _!” _

_ That might have been the wrong thing to say. _

Tom leaned back in his seat, gone nearly as white as he'd been after his resurrection. "No," he gasped, covering his mouth with his hand. "I can't be - I've already-"

Harry couldn’t deny he took a measure of glee in elaborating. "Your Horcruxes were destroyed. You died in the Battle of Hogwarts in spring, 1998. I organized your funeral, actually," he murmured, "since the Ministry wanted to keep your corpse as a war trophy. All the Death Eaters who served you faced trials and imprisonment, and the world has since moved on." Minus the ongoing difficulty with blood purist agitators in the Wizengamot, but Harry wasn’t about to imply Tom had a legacy; and besides, blackmail worked wonders on the old bastards.

The expression on Tom's face was exactly the sort of horror Harry would expect from a man hearing his worst fear laid out in front of him. But he didn't accuse Harry of lying.

"Then why do we..?" he croaked.

Harry renewed the privacy spells, layering on several more. "We - my friends and I, in the future - think it's because I was your Horcrux for most of my life." It was the only way they could figure after Dumbledore's portrait began to double-take every time Harry visited, in the years after the war.

"But how are you _ alive _ -?"

"You killed me yourself. Killing Curse, point-blank. I didn't resist," Harry felt his throat constrict at that memory, despite it being nearly twenty years old, and averted his eyes from Tom's face. "It was the only way we could stop you."

Almost predictably, Tom leapt up out of his seat, wand drawn, backing toward the door. Harry had his wand out a second ahead of him, out of instinct, which probably didn't help the younger wizard's fear. Tom's hand was shaking. "And you came back to finish the job?" he hissed, nearly lapsing into Parseltongue.

"No," Harry told him plainly. "I didn't come back in time on purpose, and even if I had, it wouldn't have been to deal with  _ you. _ I'd already killed you in the future and moved on, Tom -- I have a wife, sons, a daughter, a godson, waiting for me there." He put his wand away, crossing his arms in front of him. "I don't want to be here in the past any more than you would want to experience your future."

Tom sank to the floor, pulling his knees up in front of him. "I can't believe this," he muttered. "Only fifty years..." He looked up at Harry, and his expression seemed to have aged ten years already. "Was I at least...?"

Harry didn't know what Tom wanted him to say. He returned to his seat, and after a minute, the younger wizard followed him, putting his face in his hands.

It was kind of pitiful, to be honest, and Harry was what the rest of the Department called a 'soft touch'. He was mature enough to admit it as one of his weaknesses, and self-aware enough to know when pity was affecting his judgement. And Tom, in front of him, could hardly be compared to his future self -- so, yeah. Harry pitied him.

At least, he thought brightly, Tom wasn't the kind of person to cry, even for a performance. Harry didn't deal well with tears. The crack in his voice when he spoke again was close enough to it to give the same effect anyway. "I've damned myself, haven't I?"

"Legally speaking, yes," Harry supposed. Horcruxes required murder, after all. "But I of all people know that you didn't really know any better in the first place. In terms of blame, you're more of a dangerous magical creature than a Dark wizard." He shrugged, sipping his tea, which thankfully stayed hot. "I wrote about it at some point or another, when they started asking me for a quote for the history books. When I get back to my time I'll..." he trailed off, then let out a laugh. "I was going to say I'd send you a copy, but I'm pretty sure that's impossible."

"History books," Tom echoed. He seemed to have recovered a bit, enough to lean back in his chair again, though his fingers clutched at the arms firmly enough to dent the fabric. "Professor..."

"Oh, just call me Harry," Harry sighed. "We've killed each other enough to be on a first-name basis."

"...Harry," Tom rolled the name around on his tongue. "Are you saying you're going back to the future, soon?"

Was Harry really going to tell Tom his plan?

Fuck it.

"I figured out early on that it's got something to do with me being the Master of Death," he admitted. "Erm - that's not a nickname, I mean I gathered the Deathly Hallows in the future and it might be connected."

"The artifacts from the children's story?"

"Yeah. Charlus Potter is actually my great-grandfather-"

_ "'Not a Potter', my arse," _ Tom muttered in Parseltongue, not meaning for Harry to hear-

"-so he agreed to give me the Cloak. You're wearing the Resurrection Stone inset into your ring, ironically. And when Dumbledore comes back from defeating Grindelwald-"

_ "That's _ where he went?"

"-he'll have the Elder Wand, so I've just got to disarm him, and then I think I'll be all set."

Tom rose to his feet and crossed the space between them, looming over Harry where he sat. In a surprising move, he laid his hands heavily on Harry's shoulders, and looked him straight in the eye. "Bring me to the future."

To anyone else, it would sound like a demand. Harry knew it for the plea it was.

And Harry, the current Head of Slytherin, was still a Gryffindor. So on impulse, he replied,

"All right, I will."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is also done & getting posted in a little bit.


	3. The Leap.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Tom recover the Elder Wand. Harry takes a moment to share his knowledge of the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a bit longer than I anticipated - I ended up rewriting it rather than posting what I had. Whoops!
> 
> (2021-02-05: Corrected the timeline back to 1945.)

May, 1945.

Dumbledore did not return for several days after his defeat of Grindelwald. When he did, it was in the middle of the night, and he looked haggard, withdrawn. He reminded Harry of someone grieving-

 _Oh, right, he was in love with Grindelwald,_ Harry remembered. Even his portrait had hesitated to acknowledge that truth, years after Skeeter's book had shouted it from the hilltops. Now, more than ever, it was probably paining the man.

Why hadn't Dumbledore ever visited Grindelwald, anyway? Nurmengard did allow visitors; the former Dark Lord had designed it specifically so people could visit and gloat. Did the Headmaster-to-be just not trust himself?

Harry occupied his thoughts with that question, rather than bother the man while he got settled into his life again. Merlin knew Harry understood what it was like to be a war hero.

Tom cornered him late in the evening on the third day that Dumbledore was in the castle to ask why he was taking so long. His impatience was refreshing to Harry, who had had to temper his own frustration so many times over the years. _"Harry,"_ he hissed, in Parseltongue now that he knew Harry could speak it, _"is there a reason we haven't left yet?"_

 _"You've got everything, then?"_ Harry answered his question with a question. At the man's emphatic nod, he couldn't help his smirk. "Fine, then," he continued in English. "Get your things-"

"Got 'em here," Tom held up a tiny bag hung on a leather band around his neck. (Godric, his annoyed pout was the cutest thing Harry had ever seen.)

"-and put on the Cloak, and then follow me."

Tom followed Harry up nearly a dozen flights of stairs from the dungeons where his office was situated, footsteps muffled with a neat spell. He had worn other invisibility cloaks before, but none like this Cloak of Invisibility which Harry had lent him -- it was cool at first, then warmed slightly against his skin, clinging close to him as he walked. Tom could not call it fabric, not truly; not when he could breathe through it without difficulty, its magic leaving a faint scent in the air he inhaled that he could not identify.

They found Dumbledore pacing the top of the Astronomy Tower, and Tom stilled when the man turned, noticing them immediately -- or so he’d thought. The wearied professor did not notice Tom at all; he spoke to Harry alone, and not even his body language conveyed an awareness of the third person in the room.

 _The power of a Deathly Hallow,_ thought Tom, and while he could not see himself under the Cloak, he still glanced in the direction of the ring that sat on his hand, which had only lately proved itself to be more than an heirloom after all. He moved closer, silent as Death itself, and just as unseen, while the two wizards spoke.

_Here I am,_ thought Harry, _confronting Dumbledore about death atop the Astronomy Tower while someone under the Cloak watches._ The juxtaposition threw him off-balance, but he didn’t show it, instead focusing on the not-yet-Headmaster. He was so much younger than Harry remembered ever seeing him, even though he’d seen memories of around this time period during his sixth year. What was he, sixty-something?

“Ah, Professor Potter,” blue eyes looked at him, twinkling, but the small smile on Dumbledore’s face was forced; Harry knew his portrait well enough to tell. “I don’t believe we have yet acquainted ourselves outside of staff meetings, but we seem to have a shared hobby. What a night to roam the castle, is it not?”

Somewhere, probably behind him, Harry knew Tom was bristling under the Cloak. “Albus,” he greeted, seeing surprise flicker across the man’s expression at the casual address. “A fine night, but I do apologize for disturbing you in gathering your thoughts.”

“It is more consideration than I have been given in some days,” Albus noted.

Merlin, Harry felt for him, in this moment. He could see and hear the truth of the turmoil the man was experiencing. He’d come here planning to disarm him and be gone, but if he could take pity on Tom, he could take pity on this person, too.

“I know what he meant to you, Albus.” He spoke quietly, seeing the words strike the older wizard like a blow. “None of the noise that the public makes about commendations and awards will fill the gap of what feels like betrayal, but trust, me, the hole fills on its own if you just give it time.”

Under the moonlight, he stepped closer, really _seeing_ Albus as a person. His portrait had never been this… innocent was a strange word to apply to a man still twice his age. “From one war hero to another,” Harry offered him a small smile, “you’ll get through this.”

(And maybe, since he was bringing Tom with him, the man actually would.)

“The difference between you and I,” he continued, heedless of Albus’ unvoiced questions, “is that to defeat my Dark Lord, I _had_ to kill him. I was too weak to win any other way. To subdue your opponent without killing him is much harder, and you still succeeded. It _is_ praiseworthy, and someday you’ll be able to believe that, I know.”

“...Who are you?” Albus asked, in nearly a whisper.

“A time-traveller,” Harry admitted, a bit sheepish. “From…” he counted, “seventy-five years in the future. Would you like to hear about it?”

“I…” the man seemed at a loss for words.

Harry gave him a minute, settling himself on a conjured chair. Albus eventually did the same, withdrawing a drawstring bag from his sleeve. “Would you care for a gummy bear?” he asked, holding it out. “They were… Gellert’s favorite.”

For once in his life, Harry took a sweet. “Thank you.” He took just one, cherry flavored bear; in the right lighting, it would be as red as Tom’s eyes. As he settled in for the time being, Harry hoped Tom wouldn’t mind the delay.

Sat between the two wizards and slightly off to the side, Tom stared at Harry with admiration he was glad the time traveller couldn’t see. He’d spoken with candor and flattery together, and Dumbledore had _listened_ \-- had been brought low by Harry’s soft words, had offered up weaknesses of his own in turn. It was a masterful manipulation, and Harry gave no sign of his intentions as he did it.

And now, he was telling the story of the future, his future; Tom couldn’t help but wonder if it was for his benefit as well.

“In my future, the events until now happened just as they have,” Harry began. “At about this point, though, my future and yours will diverge, if what I’ve read about time travel is at all correct.” Dumbledore nodded as if he knew what Harry was talking about. Tom wondered if he actually did.

“In my past then, since it might not happen this way for you -- some years after Gellert’s movement was defeated, a branch political faction of blood purists emerged in Britain, their initial membership drawn largely from the sons of existing wealthy elites who’d have been his supporters if he’d arrived here. Whether their ideology was genuinely what they believed or just a convenient power grab… who knows.” Harry shrugged.

Tom flinched, surprised to realize Harry was talking about _his inner circle_ , and the name they’d just come up with for themselves to use starting after graduation -- “They were called the Knights of Walpurgis, while they remained a political group only, but reformed into a militia known as the Death Eaters-” Tom liked how that name sounded - “when their leader emerged as a Dark Lord in the sixties.”

That was him. _Tom_ was that Dark Lord.

“War broke out, and you led an opposing militia called the Order of the Phoenix,” Harry nodded toward the bird in question on Dumbledore’s shoulder. Tom wondered if it had a name. “More out of moral obligation than social expectation from your political allies, as your portrait tells it.”

So Dumbledore was dead by Harry’s time. Privately, Tom was glad, but then he realized he hadn’t really outlived him, and he shuddered instead.

“The Order combated your Death Eaters in running battles across the country,” Harry continued, “and this new opponent of yours - _your_ opponent because you were the only one with power to rival him - became known for so many atrocities that people feared him and dared not speak his name, though you did, of course,” he smiled. “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself, after all.”

“That’s a direct quote, isn’t it?” Dumbledore chewed another gummy bear. He looked fascinated, Tom thought. Despite being the oldest one in the room, the professor resembled nothing more than a child listening to a legend for the first time.

“You told it to me when I was a first-year,” Harry confirmed.

“Now, the unrest continued for long enough that new members of both sides emerged from the next generation of British witches and wizards, my parents among them. From what I’ve heard, things had gotten pretty bad in Britain by that point.” Tom watched Harry accept another gummy bear, greenish in the dim lighting, a bit like his eyes. “The Dark Lord’s power and influence spread faster than good people could be found to fight against it, in large part because the foundations of that power and influence had been laid by Gellert’s ideology a generation ahead of him. Politically, the conflict was about to turn in their favor.” Dumbledore was leaning forward in his seat, and Tom, though he sat on the floor, was too. “I can only imagine what a relief it must have been,” Dumbledore visibly relaxed at the plot twist, “for you to hear a True Prophecy in 1980 that spoke in your favor instead, telling of someone with the power to defeat the Dark Lord.”

Tom covered his mouth. A _True Prophecy._ Hogwarts didn’t have Divination, but he’d read about seers and prophecies in the Restricted Section. His future counterpart would probably react the same way he was right now.

A shiver ran down his spine as Harry recited the words. When he reached the last line, Tom was brought up short. _Either must die at the hands of the other, for neither can live while the other survives._

Harry had said he’d killed Tom’s future self because he wasn’t strong enough to subdue him any other way. But didn’t the prophecy undermine that? Was it not specifically saying that death was the only way?

“And then I was born,” Harry continued, strands of dark hair caught in the breeze that swept the Tower, “fitting the conditions of the prophecy, on the 31st of July that year. You sent my parents and I into hiding under a charm you had discovered: the Fidelius, if you recognize it.” Dumbledore shook his head. “It hides a secret inside a person’s soul. Cast correctly, everyone else who knew about the secret beforehand forgets it, and the Secret-Keeper alone is able to reveal the knowledge again, until they die -- then the spell breaks.”

“Incredible,” Dumbledore murmured, muttering about its possible origins until he realized he’d diverted the conversation. “Ah, my apologies. I digress. It worked, then?”

“Only until my parents trusted the wrong person to serve as Secret-Keeper,” Harry admitted, “and their safe house’s location was revealed to the Dark Lord late in 1981. On Halloween, he came to Godric’s Hollow; employing the Killing Curse, he dispatched my father, then my mother when she insisted on sacrificing herself. Then he turned his wand on me, and incanted… and failed.”

“What,” breathed Tom and Dumbledore simultaneously. Harry twitched; Tom realized his silencing spell had worn off in his shock, and renewed it.

“It reflected on him and destroyed his body, turning him to ash,” he continued, “leaving only this scar on my forehead.” Tom had wondered what it was there for. He’d honestly assumed Harry had put it there himself - though the runic empowerment rituals _were_ rather Dark, in that they required blood sacrifices... 

_Oh._

“The working hypothesis is that my mother’s sacrifice is what did it, not that anyone dares to test it because, well, it’s the Killing Curse,” Harry explained, unaware of Tom’s stunned expression. “You sent a member from the Order to investigate and retrieve me from the rubble - I don’t know how you knew I was alive, but you did - and proceeded to make a mistake for which I still haven’t quite forgiven you, to be honest.” A pause, as he thought on it. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you have a terrible track record with magical children left in the hands of Muggles, Albus. Your portrait would want me to tell you that you don’t need to overcompensate for the anger you felt toward the Muggles who hurt your sister.”

Dumbledore gave Harry a shrewd look. “You and I must be good friends, in the future,” he mused.

“I think they made your portrait less prone to withholding information for his own entertainment,” Harry replied, “but it could also be that I died on your orders.” Tom and Dumbledore both stilled, the latter more so, waiting for Harry to elaborate. “I’ll get to it in a minute, as I’d like to air this grievance to a version of you that’s alive enough to learn from it, first.”

There was a shift in the air, then, Tom noticed, as the moon was covered by a large cloud, shrouding the meeting in darkness. Ambient light from lower floors of the castle lit the space just enough that Tom could see Harry’s silhouette.

“You left me with my mother’s Muggle relatives,” Harry began, “extending the protection afforded by her sacrificial magic into a set of wards that would protect the house I lived in so long as her blood kin offered me sanctuary there.” The stones Tom sat upon felt cold to the touch, all of a sudden.

“But the wards only protected against outside attacks, not that any were forthcoming. I had no defenses against the harm that those same relatives inflicted upon me _inside_ the house, for more than a decade and a half.” Tom saw hoarfrost gathering, spreading from Harry’s chair. _He’s angry,_ he realized, swallowing. The cold air was raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

Harry seemed to take a moment, recognizing the emotion -- he cleared his throat, and the air stilled, warming again, but did not hide the contempt in his voice as he resumed speaking in a detached voice.

“They feared me, feared magic, and turned that fear into irrational hatred and violence, aimed my way. I was starved; beaten; neglected; abused -- the extent of which I did not learn until years later -- and did not even have the benefit of knowing that the strange things happening around me were magic.

“Understandably, I jumped right into the magical world when my Hogwarts letter came, or rather, once you sent someone to give me my letter that could prevent my relatives from burning it in front of me -- no matter that in doing so, I was entering a world in which I would have the same weight of public pressure on my shoulders at age eleven that you do now: famous for the defeat of a Dark Lord who at the time I hadn’t even met.”

At the look on Albus’ face, Harry sighed. He wasn’t here to scare the man. “No apology necessary. With any luck, you won’t ever be in a position to make the same mistake again, though I ask you to try not to if circumstances ever do align.

“But this story of mine wouldn’t be very good if it only ended there, would it? And it doesn’t: by the end of my first year, I _had_ met him, because it turned out he hadn’t been truly defeated after all. The Dark Lord had tied himself to the living world through necromancy - his body was gone, but his soul remained, though he was little more than a wraith, possessing the living to gain agency in the physical world. Less than the meanest ghost, but still, he lived.”

“Another quote,” Albus supposed.

Harry grimaced. “Yes. He told me about it in my first year, a few minutes before my mother’s protection spell activated and I became complicit in burning his host alive with my own hands.”

_Bloody hell,_ Tom thought.

“The next year,” continued Harry dryly, “I fought a basilisk that the Dark Lord indirectly controlled-” _Is he talking about the one in the Chamber?_ “-and won. And in my fourth year, he used a dark ritual to resurrect himself: bone, flesh, and blood. My blood.”

As Harry pulled up his sleeve, the clouds shifted, and baleful light shone on the scar he showed to Dumbledore - and Tom. “Which nullified those blood wards on my house, naturally.

“Within a year, the war had resumed, and a year past that, you were assassinated. I spent the equivalent of my seventh year at Hogwarts on the run with two friends, hunting down the remaining ones, and eventually I’d found them all, and destroyed them.”

Harry took a breath. He had averted his eyes to the edge of the Tower, the part of the barricade over which Dumbledore had once toppled, hit by the Killing Curse. “And then,” he murmured, meeting the man’s eyes again, “I learned something interesting.”

Fawkes hunched down on Albus’ shoulder, letting out a soft, sad noise.

“I mentioned earlier your tendency to withhold information until the last minute? Yeah. The so-called eleventh hour of a siege on Hogwarts Castle, outnumbered by Death Eaters at least two to one, after the Order’s strongest asset, their only spy, died in my arms? _That_ was the time you told me that the final artifact to destroy to kill the Dark Lord was _myself._ I went into the Forbidden Forest to face him, to martyr myself, _for the greater good_ -” Harry saw how Dumbledore flinched. “I did not flinch, Albus, when I stood before his wand and took the Killing Curse.”

“How..?”

“The curse struck only the magical tether between me and his soul,” Harry shrugged, “so I found myself briefly in Limbo, instead, and after a time, I returned to consciousness in the Forest.”

Dumbledore seemed at a loss for words to say.

“I feigned death in the arms of the same man who had carried me from the rubble the first time; had I truly been dead, that would have broken him, I think.

“But I was alive: and I let my body be dropped at the Dark Lord’s feet while he gloated to those who’d fought beside me in the earlier battle, until I could pull an Invisibility Cloak over myself and wait for the opportune moment to strike back.

“What it came down to in the end was a matter of… loyalty, one might say.” Harry accepted a third gummy bear, a clear one. Lemon, like lemon drops. “I confronted the Dark Lord for the last time with a wand I’d won off of one of his youngest followers. The same follower, as it happens, who’d Disarmed you on this very tower, shortly before your death, when you carried the same wand you have just recently acquired in the current time. The same wand which the Dark Lord stole from your tomb, once he discovered its significance.”

“No,” Albus gasped, expression shifting to a kind of wonderment as he realized.

“The Dark Lord held that wand against me, but he was not its true master,” Harry nodded. “When he raised it to cast the Killing Curse at me a _third_ time -- in which, unlike every other time, I finally had a wand raised against him -- it simply… refused. And the spell was turned on him, instead.”

“He was-?”

“Yes, I had defeated him, though I would never call it a fair duel. His immortality had driven him mad, Albus; he was no saner than a manticore, for all that he was stronger than any wizard alive. His very nature had been changed.

“I had won, and he lay dead, truly dead, and,” Harry’s voice caught, “even though the Dark Lord was responsible for the loss of nearly all I held dear,” he looked at Albus, and knew the older wizard was thinking of Ariana, “I still wept for him, Albus.”

_Why would he?_ Tom wondered, oddly warmed by the statement despite himself. _Why would he not bask in victory? In the fulfillment of his revenge?_

“Harry,” said Dumbledore quietly, reaching out to him. “You brave, brave man.”

Harry flinched. “You said those same words to me when I saw your apparition in Limbo,” he told him with a weak laugh. “It’s a bit disconcerting.” 

Clouds passed over the moon, and Harry blinked to notice how it had risen nearly to its apex. Merlin knew how long they’d been talking. Harry closed his eyes for a moment, breathing. “I have told you all of this in part so you know where I’m coming from, when I say I can relate to your situation, and that I know it gets better. In the years since the war, I became Head Auror, got married, and started a family -- those were the things I wanted out of life, and I’m sure you have your own. I became happy, Albus -- settled, moved on -- and in time, so will you.”

“But there is another reason,” the man supplied.

“There is.” Harry refused the offer of another sweet, clasping his hands together in his lap. “You know the story of the Deathly Hallows,” he said quietly. In the stillness of the night at this hour, the words rang in the air. “The Cloak of Invisibility. The Resurrection Stone. The Elder Wand.

“I inherited the Cloak from my father. You entrusted me the Stone in your will, having found it during the hunt for the Dark Lord’s cursed artifacts. And I picked up the Elder Wand, when that last duel was finished, and it recognized me.” He gazed steadily at Albus, watching the man put the pieces together.

“You’re the Master of Death,” Albus whispered.

“I was, and I will be,” Harry agreed, “and in order to return to my own time, I must also be able to say that I _am_. Whether it was fate, or some accident of magic, uniting the three in this time is my key to returning to my own, and for that, I need a favor.”

“So this favor you ask..?”

“Is to let me disarm you and recover the Elder Wand, yes. But I explained why, first, because I am not foolish enough to try and steal from the most powerful man in the world.” Harry gave Albus his best smile, and the man smiled back, sharing in the joke.

“And the other Hallows?” Albus adjusted his glasses. “Surely they are close at hand?”

“They are, yes,” Harry relaxed his smile into a smaller one. “In the hands of the other person related to this situation. I imagine you have not forgotten Tom Marvolo Riddle?”

Tom stood, moving to stand beside Harry. Anticipation bubbled up in his chest -- he knew, from the segue, they would be leaving soon.

Dumbledore opened his mouth, looking like he would protest, but Harry cut off his concerns with a gesture. “I know you don’t like him,” he said. “And some of your concerns are justified. He did, after all, become the very Dark Lord of which I’ve just spoken. But until he goes mad in his twenties, he’s still a man, Albus, younger than you were when you met Gellert, spurred by a fear of death that, if the Muggle side of this war follows what I know, will be entirely justified in about a year from now. There is nothing as terrifying as a thermonuclear bomb, and if you see Japan afterward, you’ll understand why.”

Tom had no idea what a _thermonuclear_ bomb was, but from the way Harry spoke of it, he hoped he would never find out.

“I already told Tom about the future,” Harry continued, rising from his seat. “He knows what it will be - or rather, would have been. Because I’m going to spare _both_ of you that future. When I return to my time, Tom is coming with me.”

He reached behind him, and pulled the Cloak up, revealing Tom for a moment to a surprised Dumbledore, before he stepped underneath, holding Tom close against his side, and activated some magic of the Cloak that extended it to cover them both. Wordlessly, Tom removed the Ring from his hand and grasped Harry’s, sliding it onto the same finger as his wedding ring. “I’m going to call in my favor now,” Harry informed Dumbledore, extending his hand out from under the Cloak. Under the moon, his palm was as pale as Death’s itself.

“If this doesn’t work for some reason, then I suppose I’ll just give the wand back and keep looking,” Harry chuckled, sheepish. “But something tells me it won’t. Take care, Albus. _Expelliarmus.”_

The Elder Wand slipped from Dumbledore’s hand to land neatly in Harry’s palm. Tom threw his arms around Harry’s waist, feeling a sudden sharp jerk like a Portkey activating. “Seems I was right,” were Harry’s last words before the two of them twisted up and away into darkness.

Harry blinked, and he and Tom were standing on the Astronomy Tower, windswept like they’d just flown through a storm. No one was there; Harry pulled off the Cloak, grinning, and cast, “Datum.”

_January 1, 2019._

“Oh, shit,” Harry grinned. “Tom, we actually did it.” He looked down, feeling Tom’s hold on him slacken. “..Tom?”

“Memories,” came a pained gasp. “I-I’m remembering things that were - will be-” His arms fell away from Harry’s waist, and he went to his knees, crushing Harry’s hand painfully before his grip also weakened. “I’m not… dying..?”

“No,” Harry promised, leaning down to loop his arms under Tom’s armpits and bring him back to his feet. “Just lean on me, you’re passing out.”

“Thank Merlin,” Tom said weakly into his shoulder, before he did just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 4 and onward will be posted as they are written.


	4. The Wife.

As all unconscious bodies were, Tom was _heavy_ \- Harry got his arms around the younger wizard's waist and shoulders, pulling him close against his chest, and Apparated them from the top of the Tower to the far end of his house’s back garden, under one of the huge trees he'd planted there.

The secondary ward layer that let Aurors enter and exit within the castle's defenses had never been so useful.

From his vantage point on the small hill overlooking the house, Harry could see that people were still inside. A brief Tempus confirmed that only a few minutes had passed. Thinking quickly, Harry slung Tom over his shoulder like a kidnapped spouse and threw the Cloak on over them again, entering his home through the back door and sneaking up the stairs. The sooner he returned to the party, the less likely anyone would comment on his absence.

It wouldn't do for Ginny to worry.

Though, as he passed the hall connecting the kitchen and living room, Harry could hear his friends laughing, and remembered they'd all gotten uproariously drunk just before his untimely (heh) trip. With any luck, none of them would be sober enough to notice he'd ever left, and he could slip back into the gathering of friends and coworkers with a new drink in hand, leaving them none the wiser.

A great plan. A cunning plan. But first, Tom.

Harry went up a flight of stairs and down the hall, opening the door to his and Ginny's room. Ah, it would be nice having his own bed again. He closed the door with an absent wandless gesture, which activated the silencing wards on the room - even better. Good Godric, how Harry had missed the silencing wards.

A glance at the bedside lamp lit it, dim golden light splaying out over the sheets. Harry spelled said sheets down and lay Tom on his side, taking off the man's shoes and over-robe to tuck him efficiently into bed. By the sound of Tom's breathing, he appeared to have fallen deeply asleep.

The Ring - which didn’t seem to be a Horcrux anymore despite its temporal origins - returned to its place on Tom's middle finger. Harry summoned his Cloak from the closet, mostly to see if it was still there - and it was. As was the Elder Wand, in Harry's bedside drawer. He resolved to examine the doubling-up of Deathly Hallows at a later date, prioritizing the placement of a water glass and a full pitcher on the nightstand.

There. Harry straightened up, and for a moment, simply watched Tom sleep. He had turned his head to rest his cheek on Harry's pillow, mussing the dark hair that lay in loose waves on his head. In the lamplight, his cheekbones stood out more than usual, shadows playing over handsome features softened by unconsciousness. Harry gently brushed a loose strand of hair behind Tom’s ear.“I'll be back when you wake up," he promised, setting an alert spell to ensure it.

All that taken care of, Harry crossed the room to his wardrobe and hastily got dressed in clothes that he normally wore, hiding his professor's robes on a hook behind everything else where nobody, hopefully, would see it. After six months in stiff, secondhand cotton and linen robes, he appreciated even more the silken fabrics Ginny's fashion advice had brought into his life. _My own clothes, my own home,_ Harry glanced to where Tom was still sleeping, _my own bed. It's good to be back._

He returned downstairs to join the group, and on a hunch, stopped in the kitchen first to grab the tray of Sobering Draughts and bottled soft drinks that Ginny had left on the counter in preparation. Everyone cheered at the sight, even Seamus, who'd distilled their New Year's champagne himself. "Party's over, lads," he complained good-naturedly. "Hafta buy the rest of the bottles at m'store."

Harry took a draught for himself, though he didn't need it, and stepped back to let everyone else grab their glasses and start sobering up, leaning back against the wall to survey the room and remember where he'd left off.

Ginny sidled up to him while he watched over the scene. "Hey," she smiled at him, leaning against his shoulder. The same shoulder Tom had rested on, minutes earlier. "And here I thought _I'd_ be the party pooper this year."

Harry looped his arm around his wife's shoulders, toasting their water glasses. "I had to use the loo," he lied, "and anyway, I think my reputation will survive."

They stood together awhile, comfortable with being quiet while their friends began to leave. And when the last person had waved goodbye and Disapparated from the front garden, Harry spelled the living room back to rights, and carried the used dishes into the kitchen.

Ginny watched him with crossed arms, amused. "All right, Harry," she teased, grinning. "What havoc did you manage to wreak in five minutes that you're going this far to apologize for?"

And speak of the devil, Tom was waking up. “I’ll be right back,” said Harry. “Then I’ll explain.”

Despite Harry's assurances, Tom had still felt fear as he lost consciousness, dizzy with an influx of knowledge he didn't know how to parse at the time.

When he jolted awake in an unfamiliar bed, he almost panicked -- but then took a deep breath, and recognized Harry’s scent from the pillow, and let relief wash through him instead.

Now, he began to make sense of what had happened, finding that his mind had organized the new information through rudimentary Occlumency.

Where exactly in the process of crossing-over into Harry's time this had happened, Tom wasn't quite sure, but the searing pain he'd felt briefly throughout his body had been a perfect reversal of what he'd felt while creating Horcruxes in his time. His mind palace, constructed as a replica of Hogwarts Castle, was as it had been before - simply with new additions, knowledge and recollection he could access if he chose to, memories that were not his own but would someday be.

In short: Tom had reabsorbed all of his Horcruxes, both the ones of his past and those of the future, the ones Harry had said he'd destroyed. He was not the same man as the Voldemort he now 'remembered' being; he was _sane._

Tom had never worried for his sanity, before. The last memories he had from Voldemort were clouded, fogged, like viewing the world through glass.

For a few minutes, Tom simply lay in bed and breathed, staring up at the wood-panelled ceiling above his head. Then the door opened, and Harry was approaching him, and Tom sat up with one of the few genuine smiles he'd ever given anyone, directed at the man who'd saved him.

"Harry," he greeted.

Harry had to admit he was a _bit_ relieved that whatever memories had entered Tom's head in their transit hadn't turned him into the same insane wizard he'd already had to kill once before. "Tom," he smiled back, a bit dazzled by the bright expression on the - younger? older? - wizard's face. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Better than before, I think," was the reply. Harry pulled up a cushioned stool by the bed and sat, checking Tom's pulse at his wrist and his forehead for fever just in case, and was glad to find no issue with either. Tom continued speaking while Harry did it: "I managed to integrate all of my counterpart's memories relatively seamlessly, and none of his madness."

"That's great!" Harry stood back to let Tom climb out of bed, nodding toward the glass of water on the nightstand.

"I assume we're at your home?" Tom asked, draining the glass's contents in one long gulp. He reached for the overrobe left draped over the corner of one bedpost, but left off his shoes for the time being. Harry confirmed his guess. "You have a lovely home from what I've seen of it, then." A wink.

Harry tried not to be too easily charmed. "The rest is probably more interesting," he joked. "And... if you want to get back to your reading, I've got Dark Arts books hidden in my study."

"Head Auror privilege?" Tom wondered, raising a brow.

Harry shied from the man's gaze. "Something like that," he lied.

Tom waited for him to elaborate.

 _"...I may have taken everything from your study in Malfoy Manor that wasn't nailed down, and several things that were, in exchange for not revealing its existence after the war,"_ Harry admitted after a minute's silence, switching to Parseltongue out of paranoia. _"I wanted to see what you'd been up to."_

He hadn't exactly _needed_ to replicate the room in his own house, but the layout was... nice.

 _"I'd like to see that later,"_ Tom said, sounding impressed. He followed Harry to the bedroom door, toeing on a pair of green slippers that Harry rarely wore.

"Speaking of later," Harry spoke up, returning to English, "Erm - my wife, Ginny, is downstairs. I haven't explained the situation yet. Come down for a cuppa and help me out?"

"Of course, Harry," Tom agreed immediately. He looked toward the bathroom. "I should fix my hair..."

"Just leave it as-is," Harry advised him. "It looks-" cute - "more approachable, compared to the 'you' she remembers from the Diary."

"I thought the name sounded familiar," Tom murmured, letting Harry open the door for him.

So this was Harry's house.

Tom took a good look at his surroundings as Harry led him downstairs. While nowhere near the sprawling size of such estates as Malfoy Manor, his former professor's home was far from cramped, with high ceilings and wide hallways that, when Tom reached out with his magic, seemed not to be magically expanded as most such spaces were in the wizarding world. Only two of the wall lamps along the way were lit; Tom was reminded that it was just after midnight, at most an hour and a half past their arrival in the future.

Downstairs rang considerably more modern, at least by the reckoning of Voldemort's memories - as Harry led Tom toward the kitchen, it finally struck him what made the whole house seem so new.

There were no portraits.

Harry _was_ a Potter of Potter - but as Tom began to realize, Voldemort himself had ordered the razing of the Potter estate, in the sixties. He had been there in person, hadn't he, testing out Fiendfyre on the stone building and its occupants once the wards went down?

It did not seem to occur to Harry to explain the relatively bare walls, either. But then, he hadn't been raised among wizards -

 _'Left me with my mother's Muggle relatives... I did not even have the benefit of knowing that the strange things happening around me were magic.'_ Hoarfrost on the stones, melting under his fingers.

He was brought out of his thoughts by Harry's hand, light on his shoulder. Tom blinked and looked into the man's green eyes. "Wait here a second," Harry told him, and went ahead through an archway that led, Tom supposed, to the kitchen.

He listened to the conversation from the room over. A chair scraped against stone tile. A woman's voice spoke up - "All good? I'm putting the kettle on." That must be Harry's wife - what was her name again?

"You'll want to put it on for three," Harry said. "I'll explain while the kettle boils?"

"Sure." Tom heard water pouring into a metal kettle. Someone was rifling through cabinets, retrieving cups and saucers. "Why so nervous, Harry?" A laugh. "You're making me nervous by proxy."

Harry sighed. Tom knew it was Harry; he'd heard that particular sigh before. "I saved someone's life earlier," he began. The kettle whistled sharply, and there was some bustling about in the kitchen, the sound of teacups being filled. "I rescued him and brought him upstairs for a bit - I didn't want to surprise you by showing up to the party with him."

"So _that's_ why the back door opened earlier," Harry's wife mused. "All right, we've got a houseguest for the night, then. Do you know how he takes his tea?"

"Half a spoonful of honey, heavy on the cream, with a pinch of cinnamon," Harry answered.

Tom was floored. Harry must have been observing him even more than the reverse.

"And if we have any of the scones and blackcurrant jam," his professor continued.

His wife snorted. "Really laying out the red carpet, aren't you? Who _is_ this mysterious new friend of yours?"

"Erm," Harry hesitated again, bringing to mind the flustered, faintly pink-cheeked expressions Tom had seen earlier. Tom took a step closer to the kitchen doorway. "I'll go get him."

Harry seemed unsurprised to find Tom much closer at hand than he'd left him. As the man led him into the kitchen, he addressed his wife again: "Don't say anything yet, but this is-"

"Tom," the red-haired witch cut Harry off, meeting his carefully blank gaze with wide blue eyes.

He sketched a polite bow - the one he'd learned from Abraxas for 'greeting the boss's wife', the most appropriate option for the moment. "Mrs. Gin Potter," he greeted, having remembered her name finally from one of Harry's off-handed comments at some point or another. "I believe you met my... counterpart," there wasn't really a good way to say 'future self' if Harry hadn't broached the subject yet.

"It's Ginny, or Ginevra," she corrected, voice chilly.

Tom's cheeks reddened in embarrassment, and he resisted the urge to glare at Harry for not telling him - it was hardly his professor's fault that Tom hadn't asked earlier. "I'm sorry," he said, almost tripping over the words, "Harry referred to you..."

Ginny laughed, and her next words to him had warmed considerably. "No offense taken. From the way you phrased it, I suppose you're a stray Horcrux?"

"Time-traveller, actually," Tom replied with a glance at Harry. His brief self-effacement seemed to have worked in his favor - Harry's wife was relaxing in his presence - and with a nod from the man in question, he elaborated: "Harry brought me to the future to save me from becoming... _him,_ and the madness that entailed."

He took the seat offered to him, and sipped at his tea - it was almost perfect - while Harry explained his six-month journey, taking the opportunity to examine the kitchen. It was a study in understated, established wealth: well-appointed and care-worn in a way that made the woodwork shine and the old stove gleam as only well-polished things do. Elegant, timeless furnishings and cabinetry; small extravagances hidden in corners, good jugs and vases stored near the ceiling; a glass-fronted cabinet charmed cold showed off the fresh produce inside, and fresh herbs grew in assorted pots on the windowsills, while their dried counterparts hung above the sink. Tom couldn't see anything through the windows in the dark, but he knew the garden to be there, beyond a Dutch door with a sheer lace curtain.

The scones Harry had spoken to his wife about earlier were even more to his taste than the tea. And the blackcurrant jam was the precise recipe that both Tom and Voldemort had enjoyed regularly at Malfoy Manor; Harry must have stolen their recipe.

"..He's Teddy's age," Harry was saying. "I think we were older when the War ended."

His wife glanced at Tom, face pinched a bit about the mouth. "Didn't you say he'd killed four people by that age?"

Oh, dear. Tom regretted not being able to follow the conversation now. What exactly had he missed?

"Gin," Harry said, more quietly, "I'd killed at least two by then, I've got no ground to stand on."

"That was _war,"_ she disagreed, shaking her head, but she conceded the point. "I just don't know if it's responsible to have him in the same house as our sons and daughter."

"More responsible than tossing him out in the world with naught but Galleons and the clothes on his back," Harry protested. "No better than the Riddles would have done - maybe worse-"

Tom sipped his tea to hide his private alarm that Harry knew about that.

Eventually, Ginevra sighed. "I just... I don't know if this is _wise,_ Harry."

Harry put his hand over his wife's, an attempt to comfort her, Tom supposed. He looked away from the gesture, focusing on the remaining jam on his plate. "You know what it means to me to be able to give him a second chance."

And that, it seemed, was what turned the discussion in his favor. She sighed again, but nodded. "I do know. I'll think it over. Just... don't expect me in bed tonight. I'm taking one of the guestrooms."

A small frown flickered across Harry's face, Tom saw, but he acquiesced. "I'll clean up the kitchen," he promised. "Good night, Gin." She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and left, leaving the two of them alone in the kitchen.

"That went well," Harry said after a minute or two. "I thought for sure she'd throw you out."

"..Really?" Tom got up to help with the dishes, but Harry had already levitated them over to the sink with a come-hither gesture of his hand.

"Lucius Malfoy gave her your Diary when she was a first-year," he explained, cleaning the saucers with a foaming green soap. "The Horcrux possessed her to release the Basilisk - it was only luck that I was able to stop it and save her, but even then, she saw Mind Healers for several years afterward. You were... a cruel sixth-year, Tom."

Reaching for the memories of his first Horcrux, Tom saw that he probably had been. Fragments of conversations, words twisted to his favor, hours spent possessing an eleven year old witch with her confused, alarmed thoughts in his head as she watched moments unfold that she would later forget —

He recalled much more clearly the words his Horcrux had repeated to Harry, from that time; the twelve-year-old wizard who'd glared at him, fought the Basilisk, drawn the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat, laid dying in front of him and still been determined even while the Diary had mocked him-

Tom blinked out of his reverie, thrown by a detail in the memory. "You were a Gryffindor."

Harry's snort made Tom realize that had come off as a rejoinder. "I would have Sorted Slytherin," the man told him, voice wistful. "I chose Gryffindor, for petty reasons, but I grew into it eventually."

"I'd assumed, from Dippet making you Head of House..."

Harry shrugged. "I still don't know why he did that, or why I agreed. But we all become Slytherins with age and experience. I had an idea of what to expect."

He'd finished washing and drying the dishes by now, and was leaning on the kitchen counter with the dish towel in one hand. _"The Hat told me I could be great in Slytherin,"_ Harry hissed, gesturing with the towel. _"I thought about it. Longest Sorting in a decade."_

 _"Greatness came to you anyway,"_ Tom observed.

Harry laughed. _"I've come around on the other Slytherin traits, too, since then."_ He set the towel down, and led Tom back out into the hall. _"There's a certain ruthlessness you need, to win a war."_

Tom didn't say anything to that, and there wasn't a need to. He let himself be led into a guest room, rather than Harry's bedroom, though he glanced at the door to the latter questioningly as they passed.

It was comfortably-appointed, a large bed, windows, a desk, an empty wardrobe. "I'll Banish your shoes in here in a minute," Harry promised. "You said you've got all your things with you still, right?" Tom checked; he did. "All right. You can have this room to yourself for however long you want - bathroom's through that door there. I'm off for the night."

"Good night, Harry," Tom offered, retrieving his trunk from the pouch around his neck.

Harry turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We all become Slytherins with age and experience._
> 
> I've rarely chosen to explore the Harry of epilogue age - a settled man, a man with a legacy - and perhaps it shows. Voldemort, of any age, manages to bring out the younger wizard in him; and perhaps a bit of his Gryffindor recklessness.
> 
> (Harry absolutely stole an entire room from Malfoy Manor and transplanted it into his house.)


	5. The Bedfellow.

Harry closed the door to the master bedroom with a soft 'click' that was borne away as on the wind once the silencing wards kicked in. For a moment, he stood there, door at his back, and simply breathed, absorbing the moment, in the dark.

He had insisted, while they were building this house, that the master bedroom not have windows, and the reason was not so practical as 'avoiding owls' or 'warding-related design quirks'.

It was because a lightless, soundless room was the only sort in which he was comfortable sleeping.

And he had missed this room more with each passing day in the past.

"Finally," Harry breathed as he stripped, tossing his clothes in a pile. After six months, he'd been rather looking forward to Ginny's company in this room, but as he stepped into his shower, lathered with his soap, and dried himself with his own towels for the first time in just as long, her absence didn't bother him.

Tom's scent was still on Harry's bedding when he climbed in under the sheets, gloriously naked as he had not dared to be outside of his own wards. Harry stretched luxuriously across the entire bed, turning his face into the pillow: the percale cotton was cool against his skin, softened by years of use, and when he breathed deeply, bore faint notes of woodsmoke; plain animal-fat soap; and a hint of musky cologne that lingered longest in his nose.

He curled up on his side, clutching the pillow, and wondered, as he slipped into pleasant dreams, if Ginny would have noticed the traces of Tom's presence, had she joined him.

Some time later - minutes, hours, Harry wouldn't know - he was roused from deep slumber by the mattress dipping on the other side. Drowsily, he rolled over, throwing an arm over the warm body beside him. "Mm, missed you," he murmured, snuggling closer.  _ Gin... _

Ginny always smelled of Quidditch leathers and wildflower soap, scents that didn't linger on her side of the bed for long after she'd left it. Harry relished every opportunity to press his nose into her hair and inhale the relaxing scent of-

Woodsmoke. Soap. Musk.

Harry blinked, confused. He ran his hand down his bedfellow's chest, absently brushing a nipple, as the difference registered. A soft noise escaped the other's mouth at the touch, and Harry abruptly realized that he was (1) naked, and (2) pressed up against the half-naked body of someone other than his wife. Specifically:

"...Tom."

"...Harry," Tom answered, voice soft, questioning.

Harry felt his cheeks heat, embarrassed. "Sorry," he said, rolling back onto his side of the bed. "G'night."

A quiet  _ goodnight, Harry _ followed him into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's unquestioning acceptance of Tom's presence in the bed will be addressed next chapter I think


	6. The Morning.

Harry woke alone, the empty half of the bed as neatly made as if it had been unoccupied, save for the scent left behind. A  _ Tempus _ told him it was half seven in the morning. He summoned a dark grey silk robe into his outstretched hand, cast a Breath-Freshening Spell, and got up, opening the door, to a whiff of coffee coming from downstairs and the very beginnings of breakfast being prepared.

He wandered down to the kitchen, yawning, and found Tom and Ginny working together on what looked like a full spread - an entire fry-up’s worth of eggs, meats, and sweets, all in the beginning and intermediate steps, nothing finished besides the large pot of coffee steaming in the corner.

For a few minutes, Harry simply leaned on the far counter with his mug, watching them work. It wasn't until Tom turned, saw him, and went quite red that he remembered he was only wearing a thin silk robe - a robe which, as roving eyes reminded him, showed considerable amounts of his bare chest. Harry went a bit red himself, drained the last of his coffee, and returned upstairs at a pace just under what would constitute 'fleeing the room'.

When he'd showered and dressed for the day - a pale gold button-up and jeans, with a half-buttoned burgundy sweater vest in deference to the cold weather - Harry visited the kitchen again, pouring himself just a little coffee to hide that he'd already had some, and bade his wife good morning properly.

"Aren't  _ you _ ready for the day," she teased, kissing him on the cheek. "It's only half eight, Harry, you've got time."

"I was going to make myself useful," Harry shrugged, "but I s'pose you've got enough help." He leaned against the same counter as earlier, casting an appreciative eye on Ginny's Quidditch-toned figure and the neat little bow from the apron-strings in the small of her back.

"Just sit," she waved him off to the kitchen table. "You take over the whole kitchen when you cook; Tom's volunteered to sous-chef and actually meant it."

Obedient, Harry took his seat at the head of the table, the best spot from which to view the rest of the room. "I'll be honest, I had no idea you could cook, Tom."

Tom looked up from where he was dividing the dough for the scones, cheeks pink from the heat of the oven beside his workspace. "I succeed in everything I apply myself to," he proclaimed haughtily.

Harry stifled a snort. Tom smirked, adding over his shoulder, "I took kitchen duty in the orphanage and worked in a restaurant over summers once I passed as old enough."

They made idle conversation for a while longer, while the scones baked and the fry-up fried, and soon, while Harry was in the middle of telling Tom about the garden, the first of the children showed up in the doorway.

"Morning, Mum, Dad, Teddy," said Albus, blinking at Tom's back (he was washing the mixing bowl in the sink). "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year," chorused Harry and Ginny, but not Tom, who probably hadn't registered Al's greeting over the sound of the sink.  _ "That's not Teddy," _ Harry hissed the correction to his son once Al sat down at the table.  _ "I'll explain in a minute." _

Tom  _ did _ hear Parseltongue, apparently, as he straightened up to look at them, eyebrow raised, for just a moment before he got back to dishwashing. Harry gave him a wink, then glanced back to Albus. "You don't think your siblings are going to make that same mistake, do you?"

"Not Lily," Al said with certainty. "But James might-"

Harry's eldest son burst into the room at that very moment, shouting "Happy New Year!" and throwing his arms around first Harry, then Al, then Ginny in hugs. When he saw Tom - now drying the mixing bowl - Harry could see the moment his son decided it was Teddy and leaped upon him with a laugh, squeezing Tom about the middle.

Tom let out a sound that out of politeness Harry wouldn't call a squeak to his face, whirling around to look at James with startled red eyes. "Hello," he said, voice a bit strangled.

"Not Teddy," Albus chimed in, and James jumped back, red as a tomato.

"Sorry!" he squeaked (and Harry  _ would _ call that a squeak to James' face, it was practically his duty), fleeing to the kitchen table.

"Harry," Tom asked, sending him a mildly panicked look, "you have three children, yes? Is the third going to mistake me for 'Teddy' as well?"

"Nope," Lily answered from the doorway. "Hello, stranger. Happy New Year, everybody!" And she sat down at the table.

Harry could see Ginny resisting the urge to burst into laughter at the stove.

"Scones are ready," Tom announced, retrieving them from the oven. "I've got the plates ready for everything."

"These sausages will be another minute," Ginny told him. "You can lay everything else out."

Harry was surprised by the efficiency with which Tom did so - he must have familiarized himself with the kitchen earlier in the morning - and more than that, by the extent of the spread, which surpassed a usual New Year's fry-up.

There were two kinds of eggs, bacon, sliced ham, sausages (when they were finished), beans, and mushrooms; toast, cinnamon rolls, and Tom's scones; Tom had added a bowl of fresh berries and grapes, a second flavor of jam for the scones, and a pitcher each of orange and pumpkin juice. The children piled their plates high, excited, already starting in on the meal before everyone had sat down. Ginny took her usual place at Harry's right, next to James, and Tom seated himself last, carrying over a final plate that he set down in front of Harry.

He leaned in, conspiratorial:  _ "I hid a treacle tart under the toast." _

Albus looked up, startled, from next to Tom. The man blinked at him, then nodded.  _ "I forgot you Spoke. Harry will explain in a minute." _

"He'd better," the second-year murmured under his breath, shooting Tom calculating glances every few bites.

"Who'd better?" Lily asked through a mouthful of egg.

"I'd better," Harry told her, "introduce you all, that is."

Then he took a bite of his scone.  _ "Mmh- _ when I'm done eating, that is."

Tom studiously avoided looking at Harry after that, but he did keep an eye on Harry's plate.

Harry was sorely tempted to have just one more scone - what the hell had Tom put in these, they were  _ amazing _ \- but everyone else at the table was done, and his children were getting increasingly impatient to find out who their guest at breakfast was supposed to be. "All right, fine," he sighed, "I know you three are bursting to introduce yourselves, so have at it."

James went first. "I'm James Sirius," he beamed at Tom. "I'm a third-year Gryffindor. I'm the Seeker!"

"I'm Lily Luna," said Harry's daughter, smiling brightly. "A first-year Ravenclaw. I was named after Grandmum and the only Ravenclaw Dad knows - Luna Lovegood."

"I do  _ so _ have Ravenclaw friends," Harry protested.

"Can you name any?" Lily asked, shrewd.

"...I'll think of some eventually," he answered after a minute.

Tom turned to Albus expectantly.

"Albus Severus Potter, second son of House Potter," Al informed him, raising his head to look Tom in the eye. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Well met, fledgling of my House," Tom replied, turning his dazzling smile on Al. "Tom Marvolo Riddle, scion of House Gaunt.  _ I would say I am the last Heir of Slytherin, but it seems our blood runs true." _

"Merlin," Ginny rolled her eyes good-naturedly, "two Slytherins in the house, I should've known this would happen..."

"Nothing wrong with that," said Harry, Albus, and Tom automatically, and the rest of the table broke out in laughter.

"Actually..." Albus eyed Tom, thinking, "wasn't the last Heir of Slytherin..?"

Harry caught Tom's eye just as the latter raised his fingertip to write his name in the air with little green lines of flame. He restrained his laughter as the children watched, impressed, then gasped as the letters rearranged themselves.

"But isn't Voldemort like seven feet tall and snakey?" James protested, alarmed.

"Yes, he was," Tom nodded. "And as Harry puts it, mad as a manticore."

"I didn't say  _ that," _ Harry protested, "and anyway it was to Dumbledore, you can't tell that man the truth without exaggerating-"

"Harry," Ginny interrupted, "are you going to tell them about the time travel or not?"

"Oh, right." Harry swiped another scone off the plate before anyone could stop him. "Last night I time-travelled at the turn of the year and spent six months in 1944 until I could collect all the pieces I needed to return to my own time. I taught Defense at Hogwarts and no one bothered me, until some of Tom's friends started saying how I looked like him-"

"You kind of do," Lily said, surprised.

"-and he confronted me, thinking I was his future self come back for some reason-"

"It seemed perfectly feasible," Tom informed the table. "I'd planned to be immortal, of course I'd go back to rub it in my own face at some point."

"Is that seriously what you thought I was doing there?" Harry gaped.

"That or just fulfilling my dream of being the Defense professor," answered Tom with a sip of his tea. "Or both, frankly. A good Slytherin-"

"-has seven plots going at any one time," Albus finished with a grin.

"Indeed." Tom patted him on the head, nodding his approval.

"Anyway," Harry continued, leaning back in his chair with scone crumbs all over his shirt, "Tom asked me to bring him to the future, and since that would mean he wouldn't go mad and start killing Mudbloods and Muggles-" he waved off the wide-eyed looks he was getting from his children for the slur - "come off it, I'm telling the story - I agreed to do it, and here he is."

"You neglected to mention that you were the Slytherin Head of House," Tom teased. "An exemplary Serpent, was your father," he told Albus.

Harry gave a sheepish smile to the rest of his family. "I'm telling you I have no idea why they foisted the responsibility on me, when I had no idea what I was doing."

"You handled it admirably," Tom informed him, affecting a posh accent that had the table in convulsions.

Just for that, Harry raised his chin, looking down on him: "Flattery gets you everywhere, Mr. Riddle."

"Enough, enough," wheezed James, "you're killing me!"

"Slytherin obligation," said Tom and Albus without missing a beat.

They didn't stop laughing for another fifteen minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At some point during the day: "Teddy is a Metamorphmagus about your age," Harry informed Tom.
> 
> "That makes a lot more sense," Tom nodded.
> 
> "...What did _you_ think he was?"


	7. The Office.

Contrary to expectations, Tom wasn't peppered with questions for the rest of breakfast - it probably said something about the kind of life Harry lived that not even a time-traveled younger version of his mortal enemy joining them at the table shocked anyone.

James and Lily pestered their mother into going flying in the fresh snow on a Quidditch pitch somewhere behind the house, rather than clean up the dishes; to be the subject of such whinging would have annoyed Tom, but Harry's eyes crinkled at the corners, he saw, looking fondly upon them, and the man indulged their request by volunteering to handle the kitchen.

Which meant Tom was also helping, as was polite.

"You don't have to," Harry protested, amused, when Tom made to wash plates and silverware. "Nor you," he informed young Albus, who had taken up a dish towel for drying duty.

"It's only courteous-" Tom began.

Harry looked out the window at his wife and other children in the garden, then glanced between Tom and Albus. His smile shifted into a conspiratorial smirk. "I suppose neither of you would betray me," Harry joked, drawing his wand. "Watch."

He murmured something under his breath, drawing a flat spiral with his wand; the dishes rose up an inch or two from the tables and counters, floating there. Harry snapped his fingers, and they went from dirty to gleaming in an instant. "Away," he ordered, and in a blink every plate, utensil, and cooking pot had disappeared, returning to their places in the kitchen.

"Is  _ that _ how you get the dishes done so quickly," Albus breathed. "Bloody hell."

Tom narrowed his eyes. "Was that..?"

"Don't tell Ginny," said Harry, retrieving a fine tea set from a high shelf and dusting it off. An absent wave of his hand filled the teakettle and set it down on the stove. "I had the kitchen enchanted."

He opened a cabinet by the windows and busied himself with selecting tea leaves from the numerous options within, either not seeing or ignoring the minute disbelief that flickered across Tom's face.

It was  _ plausible _ that he could have hired an enchanter, if the man was as wealthy as he seemed to be (or if he'd simply leveraged his fame and influence), sure. But unlike Albus, Tom had honed his magical senses considerably even at eighteen, and had decades of further experience to discern what he'd just seen. And what he'd seen was that Harry had just used  _ house-elf magic. _

Tom swallowed down his question; if Harry meant to reveal the whole truth, he would do so at his own convenience and no one else's. Limned as he was in sunlight through the windows, features aglow in a saint's nimbus, Harry Potter didn't look anything like the kind of man who would ritually sacrifice a house-elf to gain its powers.

The man's expression as he chose a jar from the cabinet and leaned back against the counter, waiting for the kettle to boil, said he knew just what Tom was thinking - the wry twist of his lips was equally incongruous with Harry's holy illumination, and reminded Tom abruptly of the feeling of those same lips on the back of his neck, murmuring against his skin, some hours earlier.

He swallowed, quite aware that this was no time or place to need to adjust his trousers, and averted his eyes over Harry's shoulder.

"Will you be joining us in my office, Albus?" Harry asked, filling the teapot from a now-boiled kettle.

"..I should go join Mum and them," the boy said, glancing at the door.

Harry simply looked at him, with a patient smile, and Albus' resolve soon wavered. He gave a wordless nod, reaching for a jar of biscuits on the counter.

If the boy wanted to join them, thought Tom, why had he hesitated? Then he remembered who the office upstairs had previously belonged to.

"Let's go up, then," Harry announced cheerfully, floating the tea tray ahead of him as he led the way out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

It amused Harry to see how Tom followed closely on his heels, unwilling to lose sight of him as their three-man procession made its way up to the third floor of the house and stopped at the perpetually-locked door of his office.  _ "We usually don't go in here," _ Albus was advising Tom. _ "It's like Dad's secret base." _

Indeed, Albus was the only one of Harry's children who he'd allowed to share the space; he was the only one who Harry had thought might be able to tolerate the weight of the magic within its walls for any length of time. He held the door open, now, and waved the two younger wizards in.

As with the master bedroom a floor lower, the door to Harry's office engaged a silencing ward when it was fully closed, cutting off the sound of the grandfather clock chiming noon throughout the house. Unlike the master bedroom, closing the door also engaged several dozen protective and privacy spells, which made it especially useful for clandestine meetings with the less-cooperative Auror informants. The office's contents and layout enhanced the latter benefit, because as Harry had told Tom earlier...

"Impressive, Harry," Tom spoke, looking around. "You really  _ did _ steal my entire office from Malfoy Manor."

_ "Down to the floorboards," _ Harry agreed, quite amused.  _ "And the skulls on the mantel." _

Albus sent said skulls a wary glance, lingering on the opposite side of the room while he still could. Tom, though, seemed to come to life in the space, reassured by the familiarity of it all.  _ "I'm somewhat surprised you didn't incinerate them," _ he admitted.  _ "Necromantic artifacts are even more illegal than regular Dark items." _

_ "..They've been decriminalized in the past decade," _ Harry confided.  _ "As have uncursed Dark grimoires." _

Tom's expression turned calculating again, the way it had in the kitchen before he'd started blushing; he said nothing more on the subject, taking a seat in an armchair to one side of the fire. Albus took the opposite seat, and Harry the middle, setting the tea things down on the table between them.

Harry took his time sipping at the herbal blend in his cup, relaxing into his chair. The heat of the fire worked well to counterbalance the chill in the air that Dark artifacts emanated, creating a comfortable atmosphere that would have put Harry to sleep in his chair if he didn't have business to attend to. As it were, when his cup was half empty, Harry set it down, and steepled his fingers in his lap.

"As I see it," he began, looking between Tom and Albus, "the Dark Lord Voldemort's defeat in 1998 does not, in the public eye, preclude the possibility of a second return, but sealed Ministry records would be opened that would give the Unspeakables cause to investigate. Unless you choose to  _ join  _ the Unspeakables, which is currently... not ideal," Harry grimaced, remembering Hermione's complaints at the extent of the vows now applied to the Ministry researchers, "the most effective course of action would be to burn the identity and form a new one."

Tom set down his teacup now, and unthinkingly mimicked Harry's pose. "Voldemort is dead," he said plainly, though Harry caught the subtle shiver that went down the man's spine at saying the words himself, "and he will not return. But how many people alive still know my current name?"

Harry thought about it. "The three of us, the rest of the household, Ron, Hermione, and the people who viewed the now-sealed records - about a dozen, maybe? I'd include Ministry records of your graduation and OWL and NEWT scores, et cetera, but they were so widely fabricated and altered during the Ministry occupation in the war that nothing between 1900 and 2000 counts as evidence."

"Some of my Death Eaters knew," Tom observed, counting them on his fingers. "I suppose the question is, who's still alive?"

"Malfoys, Goyle, several grunts currently in prison, Rookwood's at large," Harry made a small gesture of his hand, "and the Theo Nott who was in my year. Parkinson the elder is currently dying of old age, if he's anything beyond a supporter anyway. The rumors of an illegitimate Lestrange daughter are, to my knowledge, only rumors."

Tom grimaced.  _ "Extremely _ rumors. Bellatrix couldn't reproduce if she tried, and Rodolphus and Rabastan sacrificed their bloodline to secure their place in the Inner Circle when their father died." He glanced at Albus.  _ "If anyone ever asks you to swear on the moon cycle, kill them." _

_ "You can't just tell him to kill people,"  _ Harry hissed.  _ "What if he actually took that advice?" _

_ "Then he'd be justified,"  _ Tom said primly.  _ "He's the Heir of Slytherin." _

Albus' eyes bugged out.  _ "I am?" _

_ "If you want it formalized I can adopt you later." _

_ "Tom!" _

"I digress." Tom took a biscuit from the jar. "Were there any others alive, Harry?"

There weren't. Tom crossed one leg over the other, exposing green argyle socks with black snakes in the weave. "Lucius and Parkinson elder are the only ones informed, within my ranks, and they're sworn loosely to secrecy regardless. As I intend neither to reassemble a Dark following nor relinquish my remaining ties to Britain, I think I will keep to my current name, for so long as it is feasible."

"Will you be keeping the time travel a secret?" Albus wondered.

"An astute question; until such time as I am directly questioned about it without room to lie, yes." To Harry: "It's at your discretion, since you were also there."

Something pleasant stirred in Harry at the deference. "Fair enough," he supposed aloud. "Albus, would you mind taking the teacups back downstairs? I don't want you to feel excluded, but this brings up a matter that Tom and I alone may discuss."

Albus shrugged, adjusting his glasses. "I defer to my seniors' cunning," he declared, piling the cups and saucers onto the tray to carry downstairs. He glanced between the two of them as he made his way to the door.  _ "When you've made full use of your privacy," _ he hissed, turning the doorknob,  _ "I'd like to hear more about the Heirship of Slytherin later." _

_ "Certainly," _ Tom nodded.

Tom waited until the door to his - Harry's - office sealed behind Albus to rise from his seat, pointedly not thinking about what the young Slytherin had meant about 'making full use of their privacy'. "How much of the original wardwork did you retain while moving this room?" he asked Harry.

"Everything," the man told him, resting his heels on an ottoman that had sat beside his chair earlier. "Our blood was the same. The wardstones gave me no trouble."

"It wouldn't be anymore," Tom murmured, "Although..." Curious, he approached one wall panel and pricked his finger on a sharpened wooden leaf overhead.

With a soft click, the door to his hidden liquor cabinet unlocked and swayed open.

"This is something of a relief, I admit." To be excluded from his own office would have infuriated him. "May I engage the full ward scheme for the rest of this discussion?"

Harry nodded, and Tom gave a wordless hiss, pulling up the room's magic. It seemed Harry really  _ had  _ kept all of the wards intact - even a tricky one that shouldn't have held, unless there really were seven ley lines intersecting here. Surely not..?

He put the matter from his mind, assuming it was some form of complex rune work that hadn't been invented in his own time, and returned to his seat, turning his chair to face Harry's just as the man did the same for his. "All right," Tom began. "There is rather a lot I'd like to ask, but first: how far, exactly, have you managed to advance my agenda, Harry?"

To his credit, the man did not pretend ignorance. "Dark Arts have been significantly decriminalized, if not outright legalized, in the past twenty years," he said. "Relations with more progressive countries north of Britain and east of Germany have improved to similar extents, and trade restrictions have loosened accordingly. Creature rights have been codified - though that achievement belongs to my friend Hermione, not me."

"Sweet Salazar," Tom murmured, rising from his chair to retrieve several bottles from the liquor cabinet. He could feel Harry's eyes on him as he pulled a countertop out of an adjacent wall panel, opening a special bottle of gin that Voldemort had reserved for particularly worthy celebrations. "And the Muggleborn situation?" he prompted, adding gin and portions of several bottles to a shaker.

"While I'm not sure how well it fulfills your goals," Harry began carefully, "Muggle-borns are being visited much earlier, and measures are in place to support households that adopt those whose living conditions prove... less than ideal." A pause; Tom assumed the man was watching him, still, as he poured out the shaker into two glasses, so chilled they released a fine steam when filled. Faint green sparks leapt across the cocktails' surface as he brought them back to the table.

"Slytherin Fizz," Tom explained, handing Harry his glass. "A Silver Fizz, with embellishments."

"Binns moved on sometime during the Battle of Hogwarts in '98," Harry went on, not yet sipping his drink. "The curriculum's expanded accordingly, and OWL and NEWT tests have been seeing Os out of Hogwarts, of late."

Tom held out his glass for a toast. "I'm almost envious," he smiled, casting back to his (and Voldemort's) memories of trying for the same accomplishments, in the early years - before he'd given up and gone for war. Now, he took his first mouthful of the drink in decades, savoring for a long, long moment: the taste of victory.

Harry blinked at his first sip, then took another, liking it. "Would it surprise you to know I've essentially stopped there?" he asked. "I never could muster a vested interest in traditionalism or total magical isolation, and there's no real push for it, now most of the proponents are dead."

Tom let the question sit, leaning his head back against his chair. On the ceiling, carved snakes slithered back and forth, gazing down at him from their high tree branches. Voldemort had gone to Brazil just as Tom had always wanted to, on his travels, and seen just this, in reality. "Neither could I," he said eventually. "It was merely convenient."

"Then, all's well?" Harry supposed, going for another toast.

Tom smiled, obliging him, and they drained their glasses, switching them out for shot glasses and the bottle of gin, neat.

"What now, then?" Harry asked a few rounds later, sprawled out in his chair. He'd Transfigured it broader, to better recline sideways with his legs dangling over the arm. "Immortality?"

That  _ was  _ something to think about, though Tom was a bit gin-addled at the moment. "I'll need to examine what remains of my Horcruxes both in this time and before it," he supposed, licking gin off his bottom lip. "They've certainly reassimilated, but I'll need to see to what extent. Arithmancy will tell for certain, but two, i think, was a stable number originally... I could make them again." He glanced at Harry. "With criminals; the ritual isn't picky."

"I read some of your research notes," Harry said. He refilled their glasses, knocking his back with a pleased sound. "You knew, after the Locket - that you'd gone too far and were... fragmenting."

Tom shivered, feeling as though he'd sobered slightly. "The memories have a fog over them," he confided, gazing into the fire. "I had to keep sealing the pieces that were shearing off, or else lose them to the void. But each Horcrux only worsened the process, and my worries."

"Mm." Harry blinked at him slowly, a lazy smile gracing his lips. "So, two then. Power of three, and all."

"One as soon as I've confirmed the state of things," Tom agreed. "I'd prefer to wait another decade and a half for the second - magical growth peaks at 33, and again at 77, 101, 123... the Flamels left off at 196, and it really shows," he gave a little laugh. "Poor fools never used the Elixir of Life properly. All the research points to it as a reagent in creating new bodies, not just drinking it straight."

His vision began to swim a bit, a few more drinks in. Tom thought of the Sobering Draught in the liquor cabinet; he decided not to bother with it yet, not when Harry was looking at him with darkened eyes like that.

"And after?" Harry was saying, pushing his glass over for another refill. "You could do a lot, Tom... there's so much to the world. Even the places you already saw will be different. I'd never confine you just to Britain."

They must have independently decided to set their glasses down; Tom's fingers brushed Harry's on the coffee table. He rose, a bit unsteady, and crossed the space between them to rest his hands on Harry's chair, looming over him. "If it's all the same to you," he said quietly, gazing down at half-lidded green eyes, "I'd rather stay here."  _ With you, _ went unsaid. "I've years of research left unfinished, in storage across the Isles, on the Continent. I won't be bored for decades..."

"You'd live here, then?"  _ With me, _ Tom read in Harry's expression.

"Oh, Harry," he breathed, leaning closer, staring fervently into his eyes, "there is nothing else I would like more."

While it seemed neither of them would bring up the previous night directly, Tom dared to reference it, sitting on the edge of the chair and tracing Harry's ear with a fingertip. He was gratified by the slight dilation of Harry's pupils, the tongue that darted out to lick his lips. Harry swallowed, and Tom let his eyes follow the motion of his throat, tempted - so tempted - to feel that skin under his tongue.

"Well then," Harry sighed, reaching up to caress Tom's cheek, "I'm... glad to have you here."

Tom made to get up, to retrieve Sobering Draught for them - he distantly remembered something about Albus Potter, something he was supposed to do later - but stumbled, falling back into the chair and right into Harry’s lap. “S-sorry,” he gave a small, sheepish laugh, making a second attempt to stand. “I’ll..”

Harry’s strong arms around his waist cut him off, pulling him back against the man’s chest. Tom swallowed, mind going immediately to last night - the sensation of fine hair against his back, warm breath at the junction of his shoulder.

Harry remembered too, it seemed. "Tom," he murmured, brushing his lips over the back of Tom's neck. "We c'n sober up 'n a bit. Stay with me."

"...Okay," Tom agreed, just as quietly, letting his eyes close and his head fall back on Harry's shoulder. "Okay."

Harry repositioned them on the chair, lying back with a pillow under his head, and Tom sprawled out over him. His broad hands trailed down Tom's sides, toying with the bottom of his shirt, untucking it from his trousers. He hummed, pleased, as Tom tensed, despite himself, under the exploratory touch.

"Relax," he breathed in Tom's ear. "Just restin'.."

Fingertips deftly undid the lower buttons on Tom's shirt, exposing the skin around his navel. "Can I..." Harry wondered, hooking the waistband of Tom's trousers with his thumb and plucking at the metal prong of his belt buckle.

"Mm-" Tom bit his lip, exhaling sharply through his nose. "..Yes."

The heat in his cheeks was no longer only that of the gin - indeed, the buzz of the magical liquor was short-lived by design, now that he'd stopped replenishing it. If Harry wasn't really interested, Tom knew, he'd soon let go. And if he  _ was... _

Tom stifled a noise with the back of his hand as his belt buckle clinked loudly in the otherwise quiet room, and Harry undid the two buttons on his trousers in quick succession, letting the fabric fall open. His fingers slid underneath Tom's waistband with ease, through the trimmed thatch of hair below his navel, and took hold of him, thumbing over the head of Tom's prick.

"Ah," Tom couldn't help the sound this time, nor how his cock twitched in Harry's palm. He could feel his pulse racing, arching into Harry's touch.

Harry shifted underneath him, and Tom felt the press of a clothed bulge in the small of his back, grinding up against him just as Harry slickened his palm with a muttered spell and gripped him tighter, free hand clutching at Tom's hip. He moaned, hearing the hitch in Harry's breathing.

"You'll stay with me," Harry whispered against his ear, working him faster, and Tom was already so close, little noises escaping his throat. It wasn't quite a demand, hardly a question.

"Yes," Tom groaned, "Harry-"

Harry trapped Tom's legs with his own, holding him in place, and kissed the side of his neck, just under his jaw. "With me," he panted, rutting against him, with a little squeeze-

"I  _ will," _ Tom gasped, heat flooding him from head to toe-

Harry let out a low noise, almost a growl, and grazed his teeth on the side of Tom's neck-

Tom came with a pained noise, spilling into Harry's hand, and Harry worked him through it until he was wrung dry, gasping into the leather of the chair. The man reached between them to unfasten his trousers and took himself in hand, inhaling deeply at the junction where he'd bitten Tom, and in a moment, his seed was soaking through the back of Tom's shirt, against his skin, wet and hot and sticky.

They lay, panting, for some minutes, until the mess began to dry; and then Harry swept it away with his house-elf magic, and let Tom get up to rearrange his rumpled clothes.

"I meant to ask earlier," Tom began, pausing to gaze down at Harry where the man lay, watching him with a satisfied expression. "That elf magic."

"The Blacks' elf, Kreacher," Harry told him, stretching out along the leather like a great cat. Perhaps a mountain lion, Tom thought in a daze, half-remembered nights in the Rocky Mountains coming to mind.

"That elf was old when _ I  _ visited," Tom mused, returning the liquor bottles to the cabinet.

Harry magicked the glasses clean and away, with an absent flick of his fingers in their direction. "Five hundred years the day I sacrificed him," he agreed.

"F-" Tom turned sharply to look at him, blinking.  _ "Five hundred." _

Harry grinned. "And the last of his line."

"I'm so damn jealous I could cry," Tom complained, only half joking.

Harry rose from his chair, undoing the Transfiguration that had surreptitiously expanded it earlier, and leaned against the edge of his desk. "I could give you something to cry about," he offered, rolling his hips suggestively. "Later."

It wasn't even an original line - hell, it had been old in the forties - but Tom found his cheeks pinking anyway, eyes drawn to Harry's crotch. "..Later," he agreed, swallowing.

Harry accepted the tiny bottle of Sobering Draught from Tom without further comments, wincing at the sharp taste. "Oh, forgot they were like this," he grimaced. "Friend of mine, Seamus Finnigan, fixed up a better version when we were still in school. Takes a bit more time, but doesn't have the aftertaste."

"How the hell did he manage that?" Tom wondered, washing his dose down with conjured water.

A shrug. "It's under the Fidelius while he makes enough gold to drown in."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There wasn't supposed to be smut in this chapter originally, but in the end, it simply had to be.


	8. The Week.

In the spare room near the library that served as his study, Albus Potter sat hunched over a notebook on his desk, reading and rereading the words he'd transcribed upon it - the sum of what he'd managed to hear from the tiny listening device left in his father's office.

_How much of the original wardwork did you retain while moving this room?_

_Everything. Our blood was the same. The wardstones gave me no trouble._

_It wouldn't be anymore - although.. This is something of a relief, I admit. May I engage the full ward scheme for the rest of this discussion?_

He had hoped that his trinket would still work, but no; more than an hour had passed since then, and while Albus suspected he'd missed an important conversation, he suppressed his frustration and focused on his gains rather than his losses.

What did it mean that his father and the Dark Lord had had the same blood? And if Tom could engage the wards, now, didn't that mean they still did? Harry had never told him the full story of his quest to defeat Voldemort; Albus knew more than his siblings, more even than his mum, who only had bits and pieces of the story, but it was far from complete.

The main question now, he supposed, was: _If their blood is the same, wouldn't a blood adoption be redundant?_

"Not so, young heir," came a voice from behind him. Albus whirled around more sharply than he meant to in his surprise: Tom was leaning casually in the doorway. "Blood is only one of three components of an existence, and indeed the least of them; a blood adoption uses blood as the connection point to access and affect not only the physical plane from whence it comes, but also the magical and the mental. The Heir of Slytherin is Heir in all three."

Albus blinked. "So, even if your blood and Dad's are the same, he's not the Heir?"

Tom sauntered into the room, sprawling out upon an armchair Albus had left in one corner in case he ever had guests. "On the contrary," he murmured, "Harry is..." A sigh. Albus heard a strange emphasis in the way he rolled the name on his tongue. "There are extenuating circumstances. It would be inaccurate to say he and I are entirely the same, but Harry's claim to Lordship is equivalent to my own. You, Albus Severus, are the continuation of our line."

"All right, then," Albus offered a twitch of the head that was the Slytherin equivalent of a shrug. "What does it mean for me in terms of House hierarchy, then?"

That had Tom's face lighting up, and he launched into a detailed explanation that was only halfway through by the time Ginny rang the bell for dinner downstairs. It was charmed to ring throughout the property. "Let's leave off there," the Dark Lord decided, and they made their way down to the kitchen - bypassing the dining room, to Tom's apparent confusion.

"We only use the dining room for special occasions," Albus explained. "Or when the guests outnumber the extra chairs in the kitchen. There's six spots at the kitchen table."

He caught a glimpse of something calculating in Tom's expression as they took their places at the table; for the second time that day, Albus watched his father and Tom together and struggled to interpret their unspoken interactions.

Was it just him, or were they each watching each other when the other wasn't looking?

The last time Harry had been this distracted during dinner, he'd been holding Ginny's engagement ring in his coat pocket. Every time he even glanced in Tom's direction, he remembered what they'd been doing in the study earlier - the sound of Tom's voice, the feel of his skin, the lingering memory of heat and sensation in Harry's hand-

It didn't help that every time he wasn't looking at him, he could feel the man's red gaze on him like a physical weight, raking over the column of Harry's neck and down toward the last bit of skin uncovered by his buttoned-up shirt.

He covered his nervous swallow with a swig of coffee, over dessert. "As you may have guessed," he informed the household at length, "Tom is going to be staying here for a while." He chanced a look toward the man again, unintentionally meeting his gaze-

_You'll stay with me._

_Yes- Harry-_

_With me-_

_I_ **_will_ ** _-_

"What're you gonna do now that you're in the future?" James wondered, scraping chocolate pudding from the bottom of his dish onto his spoon.

"Treasure hunting," Tom said simply, which of course got the others' immediate attention - those were the two words every Gryffindor wanted to hear, even if they were Ravenclaw (like Lily) or Slytherin (like Albus).

It took him a moment to realize they were expecting him to elaborate; Harry tried not to smile as Tom stumbled over his words. "My- my counterpart had hidden storage of books, artifacts, and research notes across Britain and parts of Europe, so, erm, the first thing I'd like to do is hunt them all down and move the contents to a room here, or nearby." He scraped up a tiny spoonful of pudding; it was adorably dainty, Harry couldn't help but notice. "Just sorting everything once it's all together could take - months, at minimum."

"We do have the cellar space," observed Ginny. "And the shed on the eastern end of the property."

"Either would be great," Tom agreed, bright-eyed. "I can cast the Expansion Charms, so you won't have to hire anyone to do it."

"Our friend Hermione is a dab hand at those, herself," Ginny smiled. "She'll probably have dozens of tips to share when we see everyone on the weekend."

Oh, right, they were going to the Burrow on Saturday. Harry straightened in his seat; he had completely forgotten. _Three days from today._

"Is she a wardmaster?" Tom was asking, seemingly impressed. Harry glanced over to find him twiddling his thumbs in his lap, below the table; it was so weird to see Tom Riddle nervous that he wasn't sure if it was an act.

"Aunt Hermione dabbles in all the complicated stuff," Lily chimed in, trying and failing to lick the pudding that had gotten smeared on her chin before Ginny passed her a napkin. "She has a research lab in her house, just like Aunt Luna's mum!"

Tom turned to Harry now. "Hermione was the bushy-haired witch who quested with you, right? _She wore the Locket and destroyed the Cup?"_

Harry pointedly ignored Albus perking up in the periphery. "Yes, that's her. She married Ron, Ginny's brother, after the war. We have a family reunion with all the Weasleys every year after New Year's Day."

"Am I.. allowed?" Tom wondered, going a bit pink. "I'd like to meet them, but.." He trailed off, glancing uncertainly between Ginny and Harry. "..I don't want to be in the way," he finished, quieter.

Harry's first thought was that he was surely feigning the anxiety to get pity from Ginny, and his second thought was that it was working: she blinked a little, looking slightly choked, and reassured him, "of _course_ you're welcome, Tom."

"Grandmum will complain you're too thin," Lily chirruped. "She still complains about Dad!"

At this, James nodded sagely, pushing the last bowl of pudding Tom's way rather than claim it for himself from the middle of the table. "If she lets Al's bestie _Scorpius_ show up every year, no way will she kick _you_ out," he assured the former Dark Lord.

Tom accepted the chocolate pudding. "I hope so," he said.

The evening wound down after dinner with Harry's children retiring to their rooms - or in Albus' case, office, per Slytherin custom - and Harry volunteering to handle the dishes so his wife wouldn't have to. He got a kiss on the cheek for his troubles. "Night, Harry," Ginny murmured soft in his ear.

Left alone in the kitchen, he stared after her, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He bit his lip, washing the dishes by hand instead of magicking them clean and away. What had he been _thinking_ earlier, doing what he'd done with Tom?

He worked methodically until he got to the dessert bowls, particularly, the ones that Tom had used: despite himself, Harry had been watching Tom eat, unable to tear his eyes from _the pursing of red lips around the spoon-_

A frisson of heat down his spine had him nearly dropping the bowl. Harry closed his eyes and willed his reaction away, frustrated. With a snarl, he gestured sharply and finished the rest of the dishes with house-elf magic. The lights in the house dimmed behind him as he stormed out of the kitchen and back to his bedroom; Harry wanted to believe Ginny would be joining him there tonight, in their marital bed, and Tom would stay in his own room, and they would move past this _brief_ and _ill-advised_ sort-of-fling, and it wouldn't come up again-

But his bed was as empty as it had been the night before, when Harry opened its door, and Harry set his jaw, dragging a hand down his scowling face. He was so bloody tired of sleeping alone.

As if on cue, the moment Harry had laid down in the dark, expecting to toss and turn for hours, there came a faint sound of the door opening and closing, but unlike yesterday, his hopeful thought as the bed dipped on the other side was not of Ginny but of - “Tom.”

"Harry," came the sigh against his neck, a slim-fingered hand skimming down his side under the sheets as a warm, solid body took up the space behind him. Harry shivered all-too-pleasantly under the touch, breathing in the same scent as had been on the sheets: woodsmoke. Soap. Musk.

Tom snuffled against the join of his neck and shoulder, brushing his lips at the nape of his neck. "I.. shouldn't be letting you do this," Harry breathed, "bed-sharing and all." But he leaned into it, laid his hand over Tom's where it had settled on his hip.

He could feel Tom's wry smile against his shoulder, the vibration of his chest with low chuckling. "You shouldn't," the man agreed, thumb rubbing circles on Harry's hipbone.

Harry sat up and moved himself over a few inches toward his edge of the bed, more on principle than anything else; his self-control was thinning. Tom, for his part, didn't protest the escape, only rolled onto his back to look up at Harry with lowered eyelashes. "Not going to give me something to cry about like you promised?" He traced a line down his own chest, conspicuously bare in the dim light - and when had he conjured that, because Harry hadn't? It was just the right color and angle to cast his features in the sort of romantic, dramatic half-shadow - tugging the sheets down a little as his hand reached his stomach and slipped under the fabric to go lower. Tom was still looking at Harry when his eyelids fluttered, lips soundlessly forming the incantation for the lubrication spell. "Even.. if I asked?"

Harry glanced between Tom's face and the obvious activity under the sheets where he'd taken himself slickly in hand, pace slow, deliberate, patient. _Harry_ wasn't patient, but he _was_ stubborn: in lieu of a reply, he laid down again, turning to face away from Tom, and deliberately ignored the increasingly wanton little noises escaping Tom's mouth as he continued stroking himself.

 _"Harry, please-"_ Tom hissed, going rigid, and Harry's untended erection ached in time with Tom's panting as he came, Vanishing the mess a moment later and settling into a deep sleep right after. Harry lay there, forcing his eyes shut, for long minutes, torn between congratulating himself on his restraint and wishing he hadn't had any.

This was what Tom brought out in him - the impulsive, rash, _Gryffindor_ part of his personality that after Voldemort's defeat had felt more like a weakness than a strength - that he had thought he'd managed to excise with the same brutal efficiency as Riddle had once done for his soul.

 _Damn tease,_ he thought disparagingly, and wasn't sure as he drifted off whether that was directed at Tom or at himself.

Tom started on his plans for the immediate future the following morning, casing the spare shed to discern what he'd need to Expand it later. It was a necessary step: he hadn't lied about his counterpart's stashes of research notes and materials - there were bunkers and safehouses scattered across the British countryside, especially on the Scottish leylines that intersected Hogwarts Castle. This was saying nothing of the Darker materials and projects which lay hidden under stasis on the Continent, or the largest and most valuable stash, in Tom's opinion, which was secreted away further abroad, in parts of New England precisely where anyone versed in Muggle myth on necromancy would expect it to be. (And therefore where no wizard treasure hunters would ever think to look.) Frankly, given how long it'd been there, Tom didn't know if he _could_ move that one.

But first, the somewhat daunting prospect of clearing out storage space. By the first evening Tom had discerned a need for not only the shed, but also the basement of the Potter family home which had been made available to him; books and benign artifacts in the latter, and his workshop behind heavier wards in the former, if Harry didn't mind him occupying both spaces. (He didn't think Harry would mind.)

 _Or would he?_ Tom wondered, pausing in carving runes into a stone that evening after dinner. _I never had cause to reveal my work in necromancy during the wars._ The Inferi guarding his Locket had been a pittance compared to what could be called up from the underwater catacombs of Azkaban island, where the dementors' cloakless cousins dwelt. _Wait._ Did anyone know about those? Tom had a sinking (heh) suspicion they did not.

He was so distracted by the subject that he neglected to return to the house until well after Harry was asleep, and reluctantly used his own bed for the night.

Thursday morning saw Harry rushing off to the Ministry right after breakfast for a half-day at his office, completely ignoring the leave he'd been granted as Head Auror, as Ginny complained good-naturedly while Tom helped her clean up the dishes. Tom's efficiency in carving more runestones suffered, distracted as he was by the idea of Harry avoiding him - until Albus, who joined him after lunch and was doing remarkably well, reliably informed him that "oh, Dad does that every year. Usually from New Year's Day on - I was surprised he stuck around for so long, even."

The boy passed Tom his carving for inspection; it needed only a few adjustments, which was quite impressive. Albus had clearly practiced this, which was suspicious given he'd expressed a desire to take Ancient Runes _next_ year at Hogwarts. "Isn't he secluded enough in his own office?" Tom had to asked, adding the adjusted runestone to the pile of identical components. "It's not as though we could get in once the wards are set."

"He doesn't really use that office much," Albus explained, now pacing the perimeter of the recently-Expanded shed. (The enchantments had to be applied ahead of the defensive wards, or the full-moon ritual on Friday would break them.) "It's more.. for show? Or when he's on medical leave and they won't let him in the Department."

That.. did track with what Tom had come to know of Harry. Gryffindor stubbornness had to have _some_ outlet. He smiled down at his runestone. "So, what, he stays in the Ministry most of the time?"

"Yeah." Albus stopped in his pacing to look out the open doorway at the snowy landscape between the shed and the house. Tom glanced over at him; his expression had shifted into something melancholic.

 _"D'you know Dad grew up in a cupboard?"_ the boy asked suddenly in Parseltongue.

Tom nodded.

 _"He hasn't told the others about it. I don't know if Mum knows. But..."_ his lips twitched downward at the corners. _"He told me once - he isn't used to having so much room all to himself._ It's why our house is so big, I think," Albus switched back to English, attempting to lighten the mood. "Mum's the one who decorates, Dad just needs there to _be_ space."

Tom glanced around the shed. "Albus," he asked quietly, "did I.. steal this from him?" It had been Ginevra, not Harry, who offered the shed and the basement. "I was going to give Harry the ward key for both spaces anyway-"

"He'd have said something," Albus disagreed. "To you, he'd have said something."

_To me. Not to the rest of them?_

"But then, it's like he can't deny you anything," the boy observed.

Harry inadvertently proved just how true Albus' words were that evening, when he bade Tom join him in his office after dinner. "I swear I usually keep better track of these things," the man began, chuckling, once the wards were up, rummaging in a drawer of his desk. "You have to get components and materials for the ritual tomorrow, right?” (Tom did.) “And new robes for the Burrow reunion on Saturday. Molly - Gin's mum - has this thing about new clothes for the new year-"

He chuckled, then grinned, triumphant, as he found what he'd been looking for in the drawer: a coin pouch and a small scroll, which he now laid on the desk for Tom to see. "So does Gin, mind you, but she's more discreet about it. My point, though, is go wild - most places should accept that," he indicated the scroll, bound in a black ribbon with a cheerful little bow tied on, "and there should be enough coin in the bag for anywhere that doesn't. It'll replenish from the vault when it's empty, so you don't have to stop in at Gringotts."

"The goblins don't like you much, do they?" Tom murmured, entertained, as he reached for the scroll. It was the same size and shape as similar such vouchers he'd occasionally been given on errands from Borgin & Burkes, stating an amount that shopkeepers could magically draw down upon; a security measure Borgin had favored to prevent Tom from skimming Sickles and Knuts off of what was handed to him-

He opened the scroll, and completely missed Harry's noncommittal shrug and grin in response to his question, because the inside of the scroll was not a money voucher.

_Harry J. Potter, etc, etc, hereby authorizes the bearer of this seal to credit purchases from the listed Vault for the duration of sunset January 3 to sunrise January 5, 2019..._

"How much is in the vault?" Tom inquired, rereading the scroll to play off his confusion. Harry _could_ have been at Gringotts setting up a small vault for Tom to draw down on while they settled Tom's identity in the future-

Harry _blinked at him_ like it hadn't even occurred to him. "Let me check." He pulled out a massive ledger from a nearby shelf, flipped to a section, and read out a number that - Tom wasn't sure he'd heard that correctly.

"Pardon?"

He repeated it.

Harry finally realized the source of Tom's confusion and had the audacity to seem embarrassed. "Erm. I inherited a lot of money," he explained. “From my parents, and then from Sirius - my godfather - and then any vaults you had as spoils-of-war, the goblins were kind of insistent?” He scratched at the back of his neck. “The first two are set aside for the kids, of course,” he hastened to add, “but there’s some allocated to me as head of the family from each of the family vaults, and then your war chest makes up at least half - I could put that part under your name if you want? I’ve got plenty already, really, haven’t even touched it-”

"..Let’s talk about it later," Tom managed, voice a bit strangled. "I'd best pick up some things tonight before the crowds get in, and do the rest tomorrow."

He practically fled to his room to re-dress for a night out, head spinning. What the hell game was Harry playing at - waving that kind of money around? Never mind warfare - that many Galleons could _buy_ the Wizengamot and the Ministry alike! And Harry would just _give_ it to him?

He rested his forehead on the mirror - it was refreshingly unenchanted for a wizards’ mirror, yet another thing he liked about Harry’s house - and clenched his eyes shut against the distortion of his reflection in the glass. Harry was a martyr but not a _saint,_ a Gryffindor but not a _fool;_ he was a _Slytherin,_ and not just in name, and so there had to be a Slytherin explanation for this. Tom couldn’t predict Harry according to his own metrics, that was more than clear, but he’d _seen_ how the man had handled Dumbledore - even genuine kindness could be a tool, and Harry used that tool well.

So what was he trying to get from Tom?

His loyalty? An oath? Tom could imagine being Harry’s right hand, even if it chafed a little not to be in charge - but no, Harry hadn’t admitted to any interest in ruling Britain.

Not that Tom would be opposed to it if he brought it up, but there was no need for an _oath_ to keep him at Harry’s side _._ He huffed a cloud of mist in the garden air, turning on his heel.

_Didn’t I already say I’d stay?_

The spin of Apparition blew the mist away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me that I have no idea how to actually tag this fic, but I've tried to add a couple more tags without spoiling anything.


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